Friday, January 20, 2012

Bucks 100, Knicks 86 - Recap

So, these Knicks are pretty bad, huh? I've had an hour and a half to cool off and I don't have any kind words to say, but had I written this recap during the 4th quarter, it'd look like this: AAHHHH ITF LERI MELO HEWKGFI STOUDEMIRE HHEF DOUGLAS QPOEWRBN JENNINGS REIJSPW!!!!!!

These Knicks don't deserve bullet points of analysis. The switching is absolutely awful, and there is no communication on either end of the ball. The rotations were late and led to easy buckets, obvious mismatches or open shots. Brandon Jennings, the skeevy, kniving, little rat that he is, toched the Knicks for a season-high 36 points, cookin' off the dribble into fade-away jumpers and snatching errant passes or stealing from unaware dribblers.

Carmelo Anthony continues to ignore teammates and sling shots with the accuracy of a blind gunman. But then again, who's to blame him when Stoudemire coughed up the ball or barrelled into Bucks five times, and Mike Bibby, Bill Walker, Iman Shumpert, and Toney Douglas - aka the surrounding "shooters" - shot a combined 2-17. And they were missing wide open shots. In rhythm, too.

Mike D'Antoni has no alternate solutions, and showed poor sideline management by not calling a timeout at the end of the 2nd quarter when the Bucks rattled off three or four baskets in a row. He also failed to stop the momentum early in the 3rd quarter (yes, the dreaded 3rd quarter, again) when the Knicks came out flat and the Bucks adversely built a four point lead into a ten point lead.

Tyson Chandler is trying, but he needs to scream at folks when they miss defensive assignments. Likewise, at like 9 feet tall, he needs to finish around the basket better. He should be getting and-1s like nobody's business, but usually tosses up a miss and gets bailed out by a foul.

Toney Douglas looks more and more miserable with every passing moment. The worst moments came when he passed up an open 18-foot jump shot, dribbled three feet closer, chucked up a floater as a Buck (I forget who) contested, and pushed off in mid-air, only to get an offensive foul called. A possession later (or maybe a few), Douglas drove past Jennings, got tentative and shaky with his dribble, and Jennings pick-pocketed him and got an easy dunk.

There isn't communication right now. They're on a five-game losing streak, can't score over 90 points, and can't win on their home floor against sub-.500 teams. The schedule is going to get tougher soon and frankly, I'm not sure Baron Davis is the answer to that many of this team's woes.